


At The Hour Before Sunrise

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [240]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Dirty Talk, Flirting, M/M, Vamp!Steve, Vampire Bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 01:50:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18129374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: The boy at the bar is wearing leather pants. Leather pants and a dead-drop smirk that doesn’t hide the fear in his eyes.





	At The Hour Before Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Leather pants. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

The boy at the bar is wearing leather pants. Leather pants and a dead-drop smirk that doesn’t hide the fear in his eyes. Fear, yes, but Steve’s also watched him turn down a half dozen takers without having to set down his drink; all that rejection and yet nobody’s pulled steel on the kid. It’s remarkable. Steve’s seen vamps stuck for a hell of a lot less.

He’s had his eye on the guy--dark hair and killer blue eyes--since he wandered in on a whim, on the heels of a itch he’s had all day. It’s not a bad itch nor an unfamiliar one; after 20 years wearing the veil, he knows all of his body’s tricks. The rules of the daylight are easy enough to follow, have been ever since he was bit. Easy enough because of course they’re the only things that keep him alive. But at night, when the darkness comes and self-imposed boundaries lift, life gets more complicated. Always has. 20 years, he thinks, knocking back the rest of his drink, and the freedom of the night still gives him qualms.

At first, he’d missed the weight of the veil after sunset, missed the comfort the thing afforded him to pretend he was just like everybody else; a human with a penchant for cumbersome headwear, that’s all. Not a vamp. That wasn’t him. Even when the veil slipped and his skin smoked, when the eyes on the sidewalk, in the office, turned to all look his way, he’d clung to the fiction the veil afforded him and pretended nothing had changed in his life at all.

It had, of course. The whole of it. After Stark had bitten him, nothing was ever the same.

He still wasn’t sure if Stark had meant to do it, if he’d invited Steve over that night with precisely this outcome in mind. But then, Steve had been the one to kiss him, hadn’t he? And he’d known what Stark was, what he was proud to be. The veil made it impossible to hide from anyone, true, but Stark was the first vamp Steve had ever met who reveled in his change, took such pleasure in it, who looked everyone in the eye even from under the veil and showed not the least bit of shame. That was what he’d liked about Tony, his fearlessness. His refusal to be bowed. Steve had said those things that night, in Tony’s gorgeous apartment, his tongue loosened by undeniable attraction and far, far too much wine.

Tony had taken the bottle away after a while, laughing, saying something about Steve’s stamina and his wobbly legs. Never mind that Steve was sitting down, that he had no use for his legs at present, that he would have given anything--anything--to stay on Stark’s couch until sunup. Or his bed. Or his bed.

He’d said all that and more with his fingers curled in Tony’s shirt and his knees spread astride Tony’s thigh.

 _No_ , Tony had told him, his hands curled reluctant around Steve’s hips, caught between a pull and a push. _No, Steve_.

But Steve had kissed him anyway and Tony had let him and here he was, a half a lifetime later, eyeing a pretty boy in a bar.

He looks the kid’s age himself. He wasn’t. He wonders if the guy would be able to tell.

Well, Steve thinks, sliding out from the booth, this human had come willing into this place dressed like that, made himself a show. That was his choice. Freedom of the night and all that; it belongs to the humans, too.

He keeps watch on the bar as he moves across the room, easing around the edge of the dance floor, the writhing, happy mass. It’s summer, the days of short nights and interminable daylight, and the place is packed with those grateful for the escape. He can’t blame them. All too soon, after all, the clock will strike at the hour before sunrise and the colored lights will fade, the sound of the music, and the lucky ones will slip home with new partners carrying those small, unmistakable cases: the red gilded boxes that held the weight of their veil.

Or, even luckier still, they’ll go home with a creature who can walk the streets freely, dark or light. A creature like this beautiful human who is still sitting on a stool, glass in hand, the bare skin of his back glittering in the electric starlight.

“Hi,” Steve says. He’s never been one for subtlety, for treating the approach into a game. “Can I buy you a drink?”

The boy barely looks at him. Tries to play bored, disaffected. “I can buy my own, thanks.”

“Of course you can.” Steve leans on the bar beside him, forearm pressed to the wood, and tips his mouth towards the kid’s ear. “You could own this bar, if you wanted to. The whole building. Maybe the street, if you played your cards right, the way you look tonight.”

That gets him a side eye. “Hmm. And what do I look like, exactly?”

“Honestly?” The heat from the boy’s body is intoxicating and god knows, Steve would love to get drunk. “Like you want me to eat you alive.”

The kid’s face turns and ah, Steve thinks, a rush of sweet at the back of his throat, there you are, lovely. There’s your fear.

The boy says: “You’re really full of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Only sometimes. But so are you.” Steve lets his mouth curve. “Or why else would you come in here to turn down every taker? Or do you just get off on breaking hearts?”

“I came in for a drink.”

“You’ve had three.”

A flush, the kind Steve wants to lick. “I was thirsty.”

“Yeah? So let me buy you another one.”

The boy is trembling now, the best kind of tremble, in Steve’s book: arousal tied up with terror. Their skin isn’t touching--not easy, but he’s been careful--and he can sense the effect it’s having, that absence. The kid’s dying for it. Never mind that it’s mostly pheromones, the right mix of his with the boy’s; it’s all chemical with humans, that’s what they say in the science of vampire sex. It feels like something more, always; it had with Tony. But it never is. 

Never mind that bullshit now.

“How old are you?” Steve asks.

That gets him a glare. “Old enough.”

“18? 21?”

“I’m 25.”

Steve chuckles. “Well, in all those 25 years, how many nights have you spent in a place like this?"

“A few.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know.” The boy bites his lip, irritated. “Five or six, I guess.”

Steve leans closer, he has to, just to get a whiff of the guy’s sweat, the fragrant arch of his cologne. “And on those five or six occasions, have you always gone home hard?”

A shudder, just from that. Oh, hell; Steve’s a goner for this one. “That’s none of your fucking business.”

Steve smirks. “So that’s a yes.”

“No, it’s--!”

“You went home hard and got off to the idea of it, didn’t you, letting one of the vamps you made crazy take you home and fuck you senseless.”

The kid draws in his breath. “You’ve got a hell of a nerve, you know that?”

“Or maybe you get them so wound up they don’t take you home, hmmm? When you think about it.” Steve opens his hand, lifts it, combs it through the boy’s dark, lacquered hair. “Maybe they lead you in the back, by the alley, and take you right there.”

The sound that comes from the human’s mouth is quick and aching, like Steve’s struck him, but he leans back into Steve’s grip, goes with it, shows off the pale, pretty turn of his throat. He swallows hard, murmurs: “So what if I do?”

His hand is on Steve’s arm now, his fingers hot, the blood boiling beautifully under his warm, sharp-smelling skin, and Steve can feel it now, heady, that flood of want that makes his brain reel like it’s drunk.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“James.” Those blue eyes dart to his. Linger. “My--my friends call me Bucky.”

“Bucky.” They both shake when he says it. Fuck, he needs to get this kid home; needs to pulls him out of his pants and push him warm and soft into the depths of his bed. He feels like a teenager, almost giddy. He can’t remember the last time he wanted somebody so bad. “You should come home with me, Bucky.”

The boy’s lips twitch. “Why?”

Steve’s free hand finds Bucky’s on the bar, snatches. Drags it down and spreads it over denim, over the angry swell of his cock. “Because,” he says, tilting his hips into the kid’s grip, “if I’m going to be your first, we’re doing it in my bed. I don’t care what your fantasies told you; you’re far too gorgeous to fuck here in the shadows, my dear.”


End file.
